Uncomfortable questions about AI and talent
Why the next cycle will reward experience, not haste.
Picking up the conversation we started last week, which drew plenty of response, today we look at it from the other side.
Ford has rehired 350 senior engineers after AI and automated systems failed to deliver the quality it expected.
Five takeaways beyond the headline:
First, demographics are working in favour of senior talent. With fewer young people entering the workforce and more experience leaving it, the old warning that "if you get fired after 50, you won't find work again" is running out of runway. Accumulated knowledge will get paid for again.
Second, and here I don't quite agree with the usual reading: AI is still barely used in companies. It gets tested, dropped, tested again. That's why so many organisations drift in and out of its world without finding real value. Ford is an example, not an exception.
Third, AI has to live alongside humans. That doesn't mean jobs won't disappear (many will), but the human brings more than intelligence. Judgement, context, accountability. None of that fits inside an agent or a prompt.
Fourth, the future of companies (and of schools, if you'll allow me) depends on training teams that know which tasks to do 100% with AI and which 0%. Hybrids are good and unavoidable, but if you're not clear on the extremes, you're building the hybrids blind.
And fifth, the worst thing a company can do is let itself be pulled by FOMO. Being second isn't bad, provided we're not willing to take on the risks of the pioneers.
AI and seniors aren't going their separate ways. They're going together.
And in your company?
© Oriol López Villena 2026